Being Busy Is the New Form of Laziness

I am looking at my calendar for next week. It looks like a game of Tetris that I am currently losing.

Blue blocks for internal syncs. Red blocks for client calls. Yellow blocks for… actually, I don’t even remember what the yellow ones are for.

On the surface, this calendar looks impressive. It looks like the schedule of an Important Person doing Important Things. If I showed it to my grandmother, she would probably say, “Oh, Rupesh is working so hard.”

But I’m leaning back in my chair now, tapping a pen against my chin, and I have to be honest with myself.

That calendar isn’t a sign of productivity. It is a hiding place.

We have convinced ourselves that constant motion equals progress. We think that if we are sweating, we must be building something. But here is the uncomfortable truth I have learned after years of managing people (and managing myself).

Busyness is often just a socially acceptable form of laziness.

The “Doing” Trap

It sounds harsh, I know. How can working 12 hours a day be lazy?

It is lazy because “doing” is easier than “thinking.”

Answering emails is easy. It is reactive. You see a message, you type a reply, you hit send. Dopamine hit. You feel useful.

Attending meetings is easy. You sit there, you nod, you maybe ask one question to prove you are awake. Dopamine hit. You feel involved.

But sitting in a quiet room with a blank sheet of paper and asking, “Why is our margin slipping?” or “Is this product actually viable?”

That is terrifying.

That requires deep, cognitive load. It requires you to confront the possibility that you might be wrong. It requires you to make decisions that could fail.

So what do we do? We fill our days with “stuff.” We choose the comfort of the hamster wheel because the map is too scary to look at.

The Void of Clarity

I see this with leaders all the time. They are so busy “managing” that they stop leading.

They are the ones who say, “I’m too swamped to look at the strategy right now.”

Translate that. What they are really saying is, “I am too busy bailing water out of the boat to check if we are heading toward a waterfall.”

If your day is 100% execution, you have zero per cent left for direction. You are moving very fast, but you might be moving in circles.

Activity is not an achievement. Clarity is an achievement.

The bravery of doing nothing

I am trying to practice something new. It feels unnatural. It feels like I am cheating.

I am scheduling “blank blocks.”

No agenda. No email. No phone. Just me and a problem I have been avoiding.

Yesterday, I spent an hour just staring at a wall and thinking about our Q3 goals. I didn’t type a single word. I didn’t send a single slack message.

To an outsider, it looked like I was doing absolutely nothing. In reality, it was the most productive hour of my week.

Stop Hiding

So, take a look at that packed calendar of yours.

Are you really that necessary? Or are you just hiding in the noise?

Being busy is a great shield. It protects you from the hard work of thinking. But shields are heavy, and eventually, they weigh you down.

Drop the shield. Cancel the meeting. Sit in the silence.

It’s harder than it looks.

Cheers,
Rupesh